{"id":218645,"date":"2025-10-12T07:35:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-12T07:35:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/218645\/"},"modified":"2025-10-12T07:35:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-12T07:35:08","slug":"spencer-carbery-awards-interim-assistant-coach-patrick-wellar-game-puck-during-first-victory-speech-of-season-this-young-mans-first-win-in-the-nhl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/218645\/","title":{"rendered":"Spencer Carbery awards interim assistant coach Patrick Wellar game puck during first victory speech of season: \u2018This young man\u2019s first win in the NHL\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Washington Capitals secured their first win of the 2025-26 season against the New York Islanders on Saturday night<\/a>. While the 4-2 win gave the team two standings points, it also meant something else nearly as important: head coach Spencer Carbery gave his first postgame locker room victory speech of the year.<\/p>\n

After Carbery gave much-deserved plaudits to two-goal scorer Aliaksei Protas and starting goaltender Logan Thompson, he stopped to ensure someone who didn\u2019t play in the game received some recognition: interim assistant coach Patrick Wellar.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne more thing,\u201d Carbery yelled before grabbing a game puck. \u201cThis young man, his first win in the National Hockey League. Patrick Wellar.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Capitals\u2019 locker room exploded into cheers as a sheepish Wellar accepted the puck from Carbery. While the puck exchanged hands, players chanted for Wellar to give a speech, and he eventually relented and delivered one.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a special group,\u201d Wellar said. \u201cIt\u2019s my life\u2019s honor to be a part of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wellar, 41, is with the Capitals as a temporary part of Washington\u2019s coaching staff<\/a> while the NHL continues its investigation into assistant coach Mitch Love<\/a>, who has been on team-imposed leave since mid-September. The Saskatoon native has been an assistant coach in the AHL with the Hershey Bears since 2018, spending three seasons (2018-2021) on Carbery\u2019s staff.<\/p>\n

The former third-round pick of the Capitals in the 2002 NHL Draft spent six years with the organization as a defenseman for the Bears and the South Carolina Stingrays. He was a member of Hershey\u2019s 2010 Calder Cup championship team and won three Kelly Cups in the ECHL with the Stingrays, Alaska Aces, and Reading Royals.<\/p>\n

While he has had a pro hockey career spanning 21 seasons on the ice and behind a bench, Wellar has never made it to the NHL until this year. He is currently responsible for coaching the Capitals\u2019 defensemen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Washington Capitals secured their first win of the 2025-26 season against the New York Islanders on Saturday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":218646,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-218645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218645"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218645\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/218646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}